A midwife who opened Britain's only clinic for victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) has spoken in harrowing detail about the horrors inflicted upon her young patients.

Comfort Momoh, 50, originally from Nigeria, opened the African Well Women's Clinic at London's St Thomas' Hospital in 1997, and treats up to 350 women for 'reversal procedures' each year, despite FGM being illegal in the UK since 1985.

'I have young people saying to me:
"Comfort, can you put my clitoris back?" And they get angry when I tell
them what has been removed can't be returned,' Momoh told the Evening Standardon International Women's Day.

Momoh: 16 years after her FGM clinic opened communities are finally talking about it 'which is fantastic'

FGM is usually carried out on girls aged between five and 12, and Momoh says she performs surgery to reverse the closure of the vaginal opening on two women each week.

The midwife says it is 'fantastic' that communities are finally talking about the issue of FGM, a practice associated with
religion and female oppression - and one actively encouraged by the victim's mothers
'90 per cent of the time'.

Within certain communities female circumcision is deemed necessary to make a girl marriageable, and is often carried out
by a 'grandma' who has no anatomical knowledge
and sees it as 'an act of love' rather than something barbaric, reported the Standard.

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Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth and an increased risk of newborn deaths.

There are four types of FGM - clidoridectomy, excision, infibulation and other - and adult women who have undergone mutilation type three or four can have desperately painful intercourse, and suffer anxiety and palpitations when their husbands want sex.

Men can find it unpleasant, too, even suffering bruised penises. 'Some say to me it's like trying to penetrate a brick wall,' says Mamoh.

The four types of female genital mutilation

Type one: Clitoridectomy

Partial or total removal of the clitoris and, in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).

Type two: Excision

Partial or total removal of the
clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia
majora (the lips that surround the vagina).

Type three: Infibulation

Narrowing of the vaginal opening
through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting
and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of
the clitoris.

Type four: Other

All other harmful procedures to the
female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing,
incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

Pointless: 'No type of FGM has any health benefits, nor is it linked to religion' (picture posed by model)

Momoh has discovered that parents keen for their daughters to be circumcised take them on 'summer holidays' to their ancestral homeland where they will be secretly cut.

She is now campaigning for a police stall at Heathrow airport over the summer months, and wants carriers to help raise awareness of the law, 'but they think it's too culturally sensitive'.

While almost 30 African countries practice FGM and most of Momoh's patients come from Somalia, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Eritrea, Sudan and Nigeria, they are far from an anomaly.

The World Health Organisation stresses FGM has no health benefits and is a violation of the human rights of girls and women

In November, Observer journalist Abigail Haworth reportedwitnessing 248 girls suffer mutilation in just one day 'of celebration' in Indonesia.

Haworth said: 'Although Indonesia is not a country where FGM is widely reported, the practice is endemic.

'Two nationwide studies carried out by population researchers in 2003 and 2010 found that between 86 and 100 per cent of households surveyed subjected their daughters to genital cutting, usually before the age of five.

'More than 90 per cent of adults said they wanted the practice to continue.'

The World Health Organisation stresses FGM has no health benefits and is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

People who carry out or arrange female genital mutilation in the UK or abroad face up to 14 years in prison.